From Monday 22 June to Wednesday 24 June, Lord Mayor Sven Schulze will be travelling to the British tech hub of Manchester with a five-member delegation from Chemnitz. There, on 22 June, the city of Chemnitz will host the Chemnitz Business Day for the first time, in collaboration with its British twin city. Around 80 representatives from the business community and associations in the city of Manchester, the Greater Manchester metropolitan area and the Free State of Saxony will come together for this conference.
The Chemnitz Business Day is intended to enrich exchanges between the regions. Mayor Sven Schulze will be accompanied to the UK by, amongst others, the President of the Chemnitz Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Max Jankowsky.
Following an official reception hosted by Lord Mayor Shaukat Ali, who was only elected to office at the end of May, there will be a business forum featuring various presentations for the business representatives. The aim of the series of presentations is to gain an understanding of each other’s economic structures in order to generate targeted synergies. It will be of particular interest to the Saxon participants to learn how Manchester has made the transition from a former industrial city – similar to Chemnitz in the 19th century – to becoming home to the fastest-growing technology and services sector in the UK. During the subsequent visit to the Oxford Quarter, participants in the Business Day will also gain an insight into a world-class knowledge district, where up to 3,000 companies in the fields of technology, life sciences, the creative industries and services are dedicated to addressing modern challenges in research, innovation and skills development.
The Chemnitz Business Day in Manchester is being held in collaboration with the Saxon cities of Leipzig and Dresden, which will each be hosting events in their twin cities – Birmingham (Leipzig) and Coventry (Dresden) – on the following days. Accordingly, the Chemnitz delegation will travel on to Birmingham on 23 June and to Coventry on 24 June. There, the programme will focus on the creative industries and culture.
Manchester is situated approximately 300 kilometres north-west of London, has a population of 520,000, but the wider metropolitan area is home to up to 2.9 million people. The city is regarded as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. It is known for its two football clubs, live music, and over 90 museums and art collections of international significance. The city is also home to two universities – the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University – which together have more than 70,000 students, making Manchester one of Europe’s largest university cities.
Chemnitz has been twinned with the British metropolis since 1983. Exchange programmes take place in the fields of culture and sport. In 2025, for example, there was a choral exchange between the University of Manchester Chamber Choir and the choir of the St Jakobi-Kreuz parish. Together, they performed Edward Elgar’s renowned oratorio ‘The Dream of Gerontius’.
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